iHEARTflorida
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jun 18, 2006
- Messages
- 1,391
Observations, Thoughts and Opinions…this might get long.
Just got back from a long weekend trip, Sat - Tues. Sat: Arrived Disneyland 11am, at Golden Rd Brewery 4pm, baseball 6pm. Sun: Relaxed, got to Downtown Disney around 1:30pm. Oogie Boogie Tickets. Mon: full day. Tues: left parks at 2pm, sadly didn’t get to park hop this day, which they would get rid of the 1pm time, at least make it 11am.
All days were busy, Monday, Tuesday seemed no different from the weekends
Plant based Ronto Wrap is the best
Enjoyed the Taro topped Coffee from Stars Wars over the Black Caf one.
Got to meet plenty of characters at Oogie Boogie, no long waits at all apart from
Sanderson Sisters. We got to the area around 430pm, plenty of people hanging around but no line yet. I had gone to check out Buena Vista St came back just after 5pm and huge line had formed, CMs were yelling at people to stop and this wasn’t the line. I think this pretty much forced them to open the official line. Thankfully we managed to be pretty close to the front of the official line, and the Sisters came out at 6pm and we met them at 6:06pm. I don’t know if all this waiting was necessary as we didn’t check back on the area. But we were waiting in the shade, sat on the ground and had a beer, so it wasn’t too bad.
Also at Oogie Boogie we met Blue Fairy, Merlin, Ping and Meg at the top of Buena Vista. Hercules wasn’t out that night. I saw on the event map, it had a character marker at the very front of the park but I didn’t notice it til later into the event, so not sure who was meeting at the very front.
Kingdom of the Hearts had surprisingly small lines, we met Donald first, maybe only a 10 minutes wait, just after the first parade, then after we had done a lap around Pixar Pier, meeting Carl from Up aswell, who was a surprise for us. Mickey and Goofy from KH were out, sadly when I was only about three groups from the front, Goofy headed in, so I only got Mickey. But I was surprised I was able to meet any of the KH characters.
Bruno’s line was only about a 10-15min wait too if that.
The treat trails lines move surprisingly fast, they only give you 1-3 treats at each station but there’s 4-5 stations on each trail. Plus the characters are pretty good posing for a photo or selfie.
I was surprised at how many characters we were able to meet at the event, I went to Sweethearts nite earlier this year and had a terrible time, hardly met any characters and waited in really long lines. That wasn’t the case at OOB, I don’t know if people’s first priorities at the event aren’t characters or what. We didn’t ride any rides but probably could have, we left about 10mins before 11 so definitely could have hopped on a ride then but were tired. We also took little rest breaks too, so these could have been rides. But it was nice to actually have an abundance of seating as during regular hours it’s constantly a struggle to find seating.
Villains Grove, as everyone says hit it after the 2nd Parade. We watched the parade from the Streets of San Francisco and were able to walk right into the Grove, no wait, straight after the parade, once we got out, the lines were huge again. The Grove was cool, but would be waay better if they added some characters or something.
Meeting the gang in their new Halloween outfits was fairly easily. Cracked them all out one morning in about an hour. We tried to meet them Saturday afternoon, but the character calvade was starting, then a group was coming to dance or something so the characters were going to be coming back out until after 5/6pm that day. Talk to the characters attendances, if you’re looking for a specific characters - they are usually always helpful.
The gang in their Halloween outfits in DCA though, I found a lot harder to meet. They don’t seem to be out continuously through the day as they are in Town Sq in Disneyland.
I was able to meet both Miguel and Mirabel in Frontierland, which I didn’t think would happen. I thought they’d have crazy lines like when I meet Raya back in February over in DCA.
Characters meets, most all have photopass available apart from the gang at the front of Disneyland, some do, some don’t. Other don’t even seem to have character attendants, so sometimes taking photos of you and your group with the characters can be challenging but usually people in line are quite happy to take photos for you and vice versa.
Surprisingly, I feel I’ve said surprisingly a lot. The photopass photos from the OOB came out good, my ones from Sweethearts nite came out terrible, hard flash, whited out, not good at all and back then they wouldn’t let you use your own device. Thankfully things are gradually getting back to the norm, still waiting for some more of the entertainment aspects to come back.
Be prepared to wait if going to the parks. There is waiting everywhere. I was surprised entering the parks every morning, there were lines. We entered around 930am on Monday and Tuesday and the lines were always long, security included. I wondered what they look like for opening at 8am, if was just too early for us to get up.
Take advantage of mobile order, it really is your friend. Just plan ahead a little bit.
We stayed at Hyatt Place, it was a fine hotel but a lot longer walk, especially when you’ve been walking around the parks all day. We would have been soo much better at Hyatt House but they didn’t have availability. Good breakfast however at Hyatt Place.
Food wise, we snacked a lot. Ronto Wraps most days. We did eat at the Hearststone Lounge at GC before the start of OOB, wouldn’t recommend, slow service. Food so-so. Not worth it. I made this mistake last trip as well, we were trying to eat the GC Grill Bar outside but tbh the staff were kinda of rude, they said they didn’t have a table for us, even though there were empty tables and wouldn’t put us on a wait list. We didn’t quite understand, they needed to explain themselves better, and just say the walk up list is closed or at capacity whatever. tbh wasn’t impressed with the service at GC at all. We should have eaten at Byrds on Harbor.
As GC delayed us soo much we didn’t get into the Oogie Boogie Bash until gone 3:30pm. The GC entrance line was huge, wrapping around the courtyard, we decided to use the main entrance to get in. That first 90mins of OBB we should have been able to get a ride in, the line getting in delayed us.
WOC is great, I’ve only ever managed to see if a couple of times but it was great. Choose that over the projections at Disneyland. Our virtual line got us the 2nd showing, which I didn’t mind. I was disappointed the Electrical Parade finished its run though. Tried to grab a beer at Karl Strauss in Pacific Wharf before the show but it was already closed as was the cappuccino cart, all before 10pm and the carts selling sodas were packing up too!
Soo many long lines at Disney though, even just to get a churro. And areas get soo crowded as well, especially around Pirates.
We had friends join us on Monday, we had hoppers, they only had Disneyland. We tried speaking to Guest Services to see either if they could change our Tuesday park res to start at DCA as they couldn’t hop, or add hopping on to their tickets, it was already pass 1pm. But Guest Services weren’t able to help. They go by the reservations calendar and if it doesn’t show availability they won’t let you by the looks of it, which I think is a little silly, we had hoppers on Saturday but never actually hopped. I was hoping they could make some Disney magic for us, but atlas.
We never managed to ride the big rides at DCA, we didn’t even step foot in Cars Land either sadly (I have seen it at Halloween before). We did end up hopping on Monday for a little while but Incredicoaster ended up being down, as well as Radiator Springs and even Philharmagic! We only managed to ride Web Slingers and did the Animation Academy which was a full house, I’ve never seen it soo full before.
Flying in and out of SNA is definitely way easier and less time consuming than LAX, but a lot of the time you get better prices out of LAX. SNA can be expensive, thankfully we used points this trip.
Still got foods we didn’t have chance to try, no marshmallows wands at the bakery either!! Didn’t get my hands of the Raspberry Macaroon from Jolly Holiday but did get the vampire little green alien one from Pizza Planet. Tried the toffee pretzel which is back again. My husband wanted to try a bread bowl which we didn’t get round too, only had regular churros which are always delicious, no speciality ones this trip.
Saturday night we watch an Angels game, started off at Golden Road Brewery across the parking lot from stadium, very easy to walk between. Good beers. Wanted to check out the other breweries too in the area but didn’t get the chance.
Ghirardelli didn’t want to give discount with our Disney Visa - the cashier said they aren’t part of the program, however I checked the website and it still shows them.
Just got back from a long weekend trip, Sat - Tues. Sat: Arrived Disneyland 11am, at Golden Rd Brewery 4pm, baseball 6pm. Sun: Relaxed, got to Downtown Disney around 1:30pm. Oogie Boogie Tickets. Mon: full day. Tues: left parks at 2pm, sadly didn’t get to park hop this day, which they would get rid of the 1pm time, at least make it 11am.
All days were busy, Monday, Tuesday seemed no different from the weekends
Plant based Ronto Wrap is the best
Enjoyed the Taro topped Coffee from Stars Wars over the Black Caf one.
Got to meet plenty of characters at Oogie Boogie, no long waits at all apart from
Sanderson Sisters. We got to the area around 430pm, plenty of people hanging around but no line yet. I had gone to check out Buena Vista St came back just after 5pm and huge line had formed, CMs were yelling at people to stop and this wasn’t the line. I think this pretty much forced them to open the official line. Thankfully we managed to be pretty close to the front of the official line, and the Sisters came out at 6pm and we met them at 6:06pm. I don’t know if all this waiting was necessary as we didn’t check back on the area. But we were waiting in the shade, sat on the ground and had a beer, so it wasn’t too bad.
Also at Oogie Boogie we met Blue Fairy, Merlin, Ping and Meg at the top of Buena Vista. Hercules wasn’t out that night. I saw on the event map, it had a character marker at the very front of the park but I didn’t notice it til later into the event, so not sure who was meeting at the very front.
Kingdom of the Hearts had surprisingly small lines, we met Donald first, maybe only a 10 minutes wait, just after the first parade, then after we had done a lap around Pixar Pier, meeting Carl from Up aswell, who was a surprise for us. Mickey and Goofy from KH were out, sadly when I was only about three groups from the front, Goofy headed in, so I only got Mickey. But I was surprised I was able to meet any of the KH characters.
Bruno’s line was only about a 10-15min wait too if that.
The treat trails lines move surprisingly fast, they only give you 1-3 treats at each station but there’s 4-5 stations on each trail. Plus the characters are pretty good posing for a photo or selfie.
I was surprised at how many characters we were able to meet at the event, I went to Sweethearts nite earlier this year and had a terrible time, hardly met any characters and waited in really long lines. That wasn’t the case at OOB, I don’t know if people’s first priorities at the event aren’t characters or what. We didn’t ride any rides but probably could have, we left about 10mins before 11 so definitely could have hopped on a ride then but were tired. We also took little rest breaks too, so these could have been rides. But it was nice to actually have an abundance of seating as during regular hours it’s constantly a struggle to find seating.
Villains Grove, as everyone says hit it after the 2nd Parade. We watched the parade from the Streets of San Francisco and were able to walk right into the Grove, no wait, straight after the parade, once we got out, the lines were huge again. The Grove was cool, but would be waay better if they added some characters or something.
Meeting the gang in their new Halloween outfits was fairly easily. Cracked them all out one morning in about an hour. We tried to meet them Saturday afternoon, but the character calvade was starting, then a group was coming to dance or something so the characters were going to be coming back out until after 5/6pm that day. Talk to the characters attendances, if you’re looking for a specific characters - they are usually always helpful.
The gang in their Halloween outfits in DCA though, I found a lot harder to meet. They don’t seem to be out continuously through the day as they are in Town Sq in Disneyland.
I was able to meet both Miguel and Mirabel in Frontierland, which I didn’t think would happen. I thought they’d have crazy lines like when I meet Raya back in February over in DCA.
Characters meets, most all have photopass available apart from the gang at the front of Disneyland, some do, some don’t. Other don’t even seem to have character attendants, so sometimes taking photos of you and your group with the characters can be challenging but usually people in line are quite happy to take photos for you and vice versa.
Surprisingly, I feel I’ve said surprisingly a lot. The photopass photos from the OOB came out good, my ones from Sweethearts nite came out terrible, hard flash, whited out, not good at all and back then they wouldn’t let you use your own device. Thankfully things are gradually getting back to the norm, still waiting for some more of the entertainment aspects to come back.
Be prepared to wait if going to the parks. There is waiting everywhere. I was surprised entering the parks every morning, there were lines. We entered around 930am on Monday and Tuesday and the lines were always long, security included. I wondered what they look like for opening at 8am, if was just too early for us to get up.
Take advantage of mobile order, it really is your friend. Just plan ahead a little bit.
We stayed at Hyatt Place, it was a fine hotel but a lot longer walk, especially when you’ve been walking around the parks all day. We would have been soo much better at Hyatt House but they didn’t have availability. Good breakfast however at Hyatt Place.
Food wise, we snacked a lot. Ronto Wraps most days. We did eat at the Hearststone Lounge at GC before the start of OOB, wouldn’t recommend, slow service. Food so-so. Not worth it. I made this mistake last trip as well, we were trying to eat the GC Grill Bar outside but tbh the staff were kinda of rude, they said they didn’t have a table for us, even though there were empty tables and wouldn’t put us on a wait list. We didn’t quite understand, they needed to explain themselves better, and just say the walk up list is closed or at capacity whatever. tbh wasn’t impressed with the service at GC at all. We should have eaten at Byrds on Harbor.
As GC delayed us soo much we didn’t get into the Oogie Boogie Bash until gone 3:30pm. The GC entrance line was huge, wrapping around the courtyard, we decided to use the main entrance to get in. That first 90mins of OBB we should have been able to get a ride in, the line getting in delayed us.
WOC is great, I’ve only ever managed to see if a couple of times but it was great. Choose that over the projections at Disneyland. Our virtual line got us the 2nd showing, which I didn’t mind. I was disappointed the Electrical Parade finished its run though. Tried to grab a beer at Karl Strauss in Pacific Wharf before the show but it was already closed as was the cappuccino cart, all before 10pm and the carts selling sodas were packing up too!
Soo many long lines at Disney though, even just to get a churro. And areas get soo crowded as well, especially around Pirates.
We had friends join us on Monday, we had hoppers, they only had Disneyland. We tried speaking to Guest Services to see either if they could change our Tuesday park res to start at DCA as they couldn’t hop, or add hopping on to their tickets, it was already pass 1pm. But Guest Services weren’t able to help. They go by the reservations calendar and if it doesn’t show availability they won’t let you by the looks of it, which I think is a little silly, we had hoppers on Saturday but never actually hopped. I was hoping they could make some Disney magic for us, but atlas.
We never managed to ride the big rides at DCA, we didn’t even step foot in Cars Land either sadly (I have seen it at Halloween before). We did end up hopping on Monday for a little while but Incredicoaster ended up being down, as well as Radiator Springs and even Philharmagic! We only managed to ride Web Slingers and did the Animation Academy which was a full house, I’ve never seen it soo full before.
Flying in and out of SNA is definitely way easier and less time consuming than LAX, but a lot of the time you get better prices out of LAX. SNA can be expensive, thankfully we used points this trip.
Still got foods we didn’t have chance to try, no marshmallows wands at the bakery either!! Didn’t get my hands of the Raspberry Macaroon from Jolly Holiday but did get the vampire little green alien one from Pizza Planet. Tried the toffee pretzel which is back again. My husband wanted to try a bread bowl which we didn’t get round too, only had regular churros which are always delicious, no speciality ones this trip.
Saturday night we watch an Angels game, started off at Golden Road Brewery across the parking lot from stadium, very easy to walk between. Good beers. Wanted to check out the other breweries too in the area but didn’t get the chance.
Ghirardelli didn’t want to give discount with our Disney Visa - the cashier said they aren’t part of the program, however I checked the website and it still shows them.
